SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
(1908-1986)
In t h e spring of 1929, when she was finishing her studies in philosophy and
for her final exams, Simone d e Beauvoir met Jean-Paul Sartre. After
finishing second in her class in t h e exams (Sartre was first), Beauvoir went t o the
country with her family for t h e summer. Sartre followed her, and they became
lovers. In Paris that fall they worked out the beginnings of their lifelong relationship, which aimed at stability while bypassing bourgeois marriage.
Beauvoir came from a conservative family but yearned for freedom and independence. She arranged a compromise between her own needs and her parents'
concern for respectability by renting a room from her grandmother-the
farthest room possible from t h e old woman's and one which granted her a certain
degree of privacy.
Few serious autobiographies by women were available in t h e 1950s. W h e n
Beauvoir's first volume of autobiography, Memoirs o f a Dutiful Daughter, appeared in 1958, it constituted in some ways as important a feminist text as The
Secondsex, her epic account of women's oppression. She went on t o write three
more exhaustive volumes, The Prime o f Life (1960), Force o f Circumstance
(1963), and All Said and Done (1g72), plus a beautiful memoir about her
mother, A Very Easy Death ( 1966).
This selection is the opening of The Prime o f L i f e and describes the start of
her relationship with Sartre, capturing her delight in adult freedom. T h e volume
covers t h e years from i 929 t o 1944.
,For another account of t h e thrill of choice, compare Nina Berberova, The
Italics Are Mine. For other dutiful daughters, compare Jill Ker Conway, The
Road from Coorain and Eleanor Munro, Memoir of a Modernist's Daughter.
FROM
The Prime of Life
The m o s t intoxicating a s p e c t of m y r e t u r n to Paris in S e p t e m b e r ,
the f r e e d o m I n o w possessed. I h a d d r e a m e d of i t s i n c e childhood, w h e n I played w i t h m y sister a t b e i n g a "grown-up" girl. I h a v e
1929,was
I1
:
i
recorded elsewhere m y passionate l o n g i n g f o r i t a s a s t u d e n t . N o w , suddenly, i t was m i n e . I was a s t o n i s h e d to find a n effortless buoyancy in all
m y m o v e m e n t s . F r o m the m o m e n t I o p e n e d m y eyes every m o r n i n g I
54
The Norton Book of Women H Lives
was lost in a transport of delight. W h e n I was about twelve I had suffered
through not having a private retreat of my own a t home. Leafing
through M o n journal I had found a story about an English schoolgirl,
and gazed enviously a t the colored illustration portraying her room.
There was a desk, and a divan, and shelves filled with books. Here,
within these gaily painted walls, she read and worked and drank tea, with
n o one watching her-how
envious I felt! For the first time ever I had
glimpsed a more fortunate way of life than my own. And now, a t long
last, I too had a room to myself. My grandmother had stripped her
drawing room of all its armchairs, occasional tables, and knickknacks. I
had bought some unpainted furniture, and my sister had helped me to
give it a coat of brown varnish. I had a table, two chairs, a large chest
which served both as a seat and as a hold-all, shelves for my books. I
papered the walls orange, and got a divan t o match. From my fifth-floor
balcony I looked out over the Lion of Belfort and the plane trees on the
Rue Defifert-Rochereau. I kept myself warm with an evil-smelling kerasene stove. Somehow its stink seemed t o protect my solitude, and I loved
it. It was wonderful to be able to shut my door and keep my daily life free
of other people's inquisitiveness. For a long time I remained indifferent
t o t h e dCcor of my surroundings. Possibly because of that picture in M o n
journal I preferred rooms that offered me a divan and bookshelves, but I
was prepared to put up with any sort of retreat in a pinch. To have a door
that I could shut was still the height of bliss for me.
I paid rent to my grandmother, and she treated me with the same
unobtrusive respect she showed her other lodgers. I was free to come
and go as I pleased. I could get home with t h e milk, read in bed all
night, sleep till midday, shut myself up for forty-eight hours a t a stretch,
or go out on the spur of the moment. My lunch was a bowl of
borsch a t Dominique's, and for supper I took a cup of hot chocolate
a t La Coupole. I was fond of hot chocolate, and borsch, and lengthy
siestas and sleepless nights: but my chief delight was in doing as I
pleased. There was practically nothing to stop me. I discovered, to my
great pleasure, that "the serious business of living7' on which grownups
had held forth to me so interminably was not, in fact, quite so oppressive
after all. Getting through my examinations, on t h e other hand, had been
no joke. I had worked desperately hard, always with the fear of possible
failure, always tired, and with various stubborn obstacles t o overcome.
Now I encountered no such resistance anywhere: I felt as though I were
on vacation forever. A little private tutoring and a part-time teaching job
a t the Lycee Victor-Duruy guaranteed me enough to live on. These
duties did not even prove a burden to me, since I felt that by performing
them I was involved in a new sort of game: I was playing a t being a
grownup. Hunting for private pupils, having discussions with senior mis-
Sirnone de Beauvoir
55
tresses or parents, working out my budget, borrowing, paying back, adding up figures-all these activities amused m e because I was doing them
for t h e first time. I remember how tickled I was when I got my first salary
check. I felt I had played a practical joke on someone.
Clothes and cosmetics had never interested me overmuch, but I nevertheless took some pleasure in dressing as I wanted to. I was still in
mourning for my grandfather, and had no wish to shock people, so I
bought myself a gray coat, with shoes and toque to match. I had two
dresses made, one of t h e same gray, and the other in black and white. All
my life I had been dressed in cotton or woolen frocks, so now I reacted
by choosing silk-style materials instead--crepe d e C h i n e and a ghastly
fabric of embossed velvet called velours frappe' which was all t h e rage
that winter. Every morning I would make up with more dash than skill,
smothering my face in powder, dabbing a patch of rouge on each cheek,
and applying lipstick liberally. I t struck m e as ridiculous that anyone
should dress up more elaborately on Sunday than during t h e week.
Henceforth, I decided, every day was to b e a holiday as far as I was
concerned, and I always wore t h e same get-up, whatever t h e circumstances. I t did occur to m e that crepe d e C h i n e and velours frappe' were
rather out of place in t h e corridors of a lyce'e, and that my evening shoes
might have been less down a t t h e heel if I hadn't tramped t h e Paris
pavements in them from morning till night; but I couldn't have cared
less. M y personal appearance was one of those things that I refused to
take really seriously.
I moved in, bought a new outfit, had friends in t o see me, and went
visiting myself; but all these were preliminary activities only. M y new life
really began when Sartre returned t o Paris in mid-October.
Sartre had come to see m e when we were in Limousin. H e stayed at
the HBtel d e la Boule d 7 0 r ,in Saint-Germain-les-Belles, and in order to
avoid gossip we used to meet out in the country, a good way from town.
In t h e old days I had often wandered here, bitterly hugging my loneliness; but now I hurried blithely across the grassy parkland every morning, skipping over hurdles and plunging through dew-wet meadows. W e
would sit down together in t h e grass and talk. T h e first day I never
supposed that, away from Paris and our friends, such an occupation
would wholly suffice for us. I had suggested that we might bring some
books along, and read. Sartre refused indignantly. H e also swept aside all
my suggestions that we might go for a walk. H e was allergic to chlorophyll, h e said, and all this lush green pasturage exhausted him. T h e only
way h e could put up with it was to forget it. Fair enough. Though I had
received little encouragement in that direction, talking did not scare me.
W e picked up our discussion a t the point where we had left off in Paris;
56
The Norton Book of Women's Lives
and very soon I realized that even though we went on talking till Judgm e n t Day, I would still find t h e time all too short. I t had been early
morning when we came out, and there was the luncheon bell already. I
used to go home and eat with my family, while Sartre lunched on cheese
or gingerbread, deposited by my cousin Madeleine in a n abandoned
dovecote that stood "by the house down t h e road"; Madeleine adored
anything romantic. Hardly had t h e afternoon begun before it was over,
and darkness falling; Sartre would then go back to his hotel and eat
dinner among the commercial travelers. I had told my parents we were
working together on a book, a critical study of Marxism. I hoped to
butter them u p by pandering to their hatred of Communism, but I
cannot have been very convincing. Four days after Sartre arrived, I saw
t h e m appear a t the edge of the meadow where we were sitting.
They walked toward us. Under his yellowing straw boater, my father
wore a resolute but somewhat embarrassed expression. Sartre, who on
this particular day happened to be wearing a decidedly aggressive red
shirt, sprang t o his feet, the light of battle in his eye. M y father asked
him, quite politely, to leave t h e district. People were gossiping, h e said;
besides, it was hoped to get my cousin married, and such apparently
scandalous behavior on my part was harmful to her reputation. Sartre
replied vigorously enough, but without too much violence, since h e had
made up his mind not to leave a minute sooner than h e intended. W e
merely arranged somewhat more secret meeting places, in a chestnut
grove a little distance away. My father did not return t o t h e attack, and
Sartre stayed on another week a t t h e Boule d 7 0 r .Afterward we wrote t o
each other daily.
By the time I met him again, in October, I had (as I describe in
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) jettisoned all past attachments, and
now threw myself unreservedly into t h e development of this new relationship. Sartre was soon due for his military service; meanwhile h e
remained on vacation. H e was staying with his grandparents (his
mother's family, that is: their name was Schweitzer) on t h e Rue SaintJacques, and we would meet each morning in t h e Luxembourg Gardens,
where carved stone queens gazed blindly down a t us amid a dapple of
gray and gold: it was late a t night before we separated. We walked t h e
streets of Paris, still talking-about
ourselves and our relationship, our
future life, our yet unwritten books. Today it strikes m e that the most
important aspect of these conversations was not so much what we said as
what we took for granted, and what in fact was not so a t all. W e were
wrong about almost everything. An accurate character sketch must
needs take these errors into account, since they expressed one kind of
reality--our actual situation.
As I have said elsewhere, Sartre lived for his writing. H e felt he had a
Sirnone de Beauvoir
57
mission t o hold forth on any subject, tackling it as best suited him in t h e
light of circumstance. He had exhorted m e t o open my eyes to t h e
manifold glories of life; I too must write, in order t o snatch that vision
from obliteration by time. T h e self-evident obviousness of our respective
vocations seemed t o us t o guarantee their eventual fulfillment. Though
we did not formulate it in such terms, we were approaching a condition
of Kantian optimism, where you should implies you can. Indeed, how
could one's resolution falter in doubt a t t h e very moment of choice and
affirmation? Upon such an occasion will and belief coincide. So we put
our trust in t h e world, and in ourselves. Society as then constituted we
opposed. But there was nothing sour about this enmity: it carried an
implication of robust optimism. M a n was t o b e remolded, and t h e process would b e partly our doing. W e did not envisage contributing t o this
change except by way of books: public affairs bored us. We counted o n
events turning out according t o our wishes without any need for us to
mix in them personally. In this respect our attitude was characteristic of
that general euphoria affecting t h e French Left during t h e autumn of
1929.Peace seemed finally assured: t h e expansion of t h e German Nazi
party was a mere fringe phenomenon, without any serious significance.
I t would not be long before colonialism folded up: Gandhi's campaign in
India a n d t h e Communist agitation in French Indo-China were proof
enough of that. Moreover t h e whole capitalist world was, a t t h e time,
being shaken by a crisis of t h e utmost gravity; and this encouraged t h e
assumption that capitalism as such had had its day. W e felt that we were
already living in that Golden Age which for us constituted t h e secret
truth of History, and t h e revelation of which remained History's final
and exclusive objective.
A t every level we failed t o face t h e weight of reality, priding ourselves
on what we called our "radical freedom." We clung so long and so
desperately to that word "freedom" that it will be as well t o make a
closer examination of just what we implied by it.
T h e r e was a genuine enough field of experience for it t o cover. Every
activity contains its own freedom, intellectual activity in particular, because it seldom repeats itself. W e had worked hard; we had been forced,
unremittingly, t o rediscover and revaluate; we possessed a practical, unimpeachable, intuitive awareness of t h e nature of freedom. T h e mistake
we made was in failing t o restrict this concept t o its proper limits. W e
clung t o t h e image of Kant's dove, supported rather than hindered in
flight by t h e resistant air. W e regarded any existing situation as raw
material for our joint efforts, and not as a factor conditioning them: we
imagined ourselves t o b e wholly independent agents. This spiritual
pride, like our political blindness, can b e explained in t h e first instance
by t h e violent intensity which characterized all our plans. T o be a writer,
58
The Norton Book of Women's Lives
to create-this
was an adventure scarcely t o be embarked upon without
a conviction of absolute self-mastery, absolute control over ends and
means. O u r boldness was inseparable from the illusions which sustained
it; circumstances had favored them both. N o external hazard had ever
compelled us t o go against our own natural inclinations. W e sought
knowledge, self-expression; and now we found ourselves u p to our necks
in just such activities. O u r way of life was so exactly what we wanted that
i t was as though it had chosen us; we regarded this as a n omen of its
regular submission t o our future plans. T h e same fate that had served our
purpose also shielded us from the world's adversity.
Nor, o n the other hand, did we feel any private emotional obligations.
I kept on good terms with my parents, but they n o longer had any real
hold over me. Sartre had never known his father, and neither his mother
nor his grandparents had ever represented authority in his eyes. In a
sense we both lacked a real family, and we had elevated this contingency
into a principle. Here we were encouraged by Cartesian rationalism,
which we had picked up from Alain,* and which we welcomed precisely
because it happened t o suit our convenience. There were n o scruples, n o
feelings of respect or loyal affection that would stop us from making u p
our minds by the pure light of reason-and
of our own desires. We were
unaware of any cloudiness or confusion in our mental processes; we
believed ourselves to consist of pure reason and pure will. This conviction was fortified by the eagerness with which we staked our all on the
future; we were not tied down t o any particular interest, since present
a n d past were continually leap-frogging. We never hesitated t o disagree
with any point, and indeed with each other, whenever occasion demanded; it was easy for us t o criticize or condemn the other's views,
since every shift of opinion we regarded as a step forward. As our ignorance kept us unaware of most of t h e problems that might have worried
us, we remained quite content with these revisions of doctrine, and
indeed thought ourselves very daring.
So we went our way without let or hindrance, unembarrassed and
unafraid; yet how was it that we did not a t least stumble into one or two
roadblocks? After all, our pockets were virtually empty. I scraped a
scanty living, while Sartre was going through a small legacy h e had from
his paternal grandmother. T h e shops were laden with goods we could
not buy, while all luxury resorts were closed to us. We met these prohibitions with indifference, even with active disdain. We were not ascetics,
far from it; but now as before (and in this Sartre and I were alike) only
those things within my reach, in particular those I could actually touch,
had any true weight of reality for me. I gave myself up so completely t o
* ~ r n i l echartier, called Alain, was a professor of philosophy-ED.
Simone de Beauvoir
59
present desires and pleasures that I had no energy t o waste on mere
wishful thinking. W h a t was the point in regretting the absence of a car,
when there were so many discoveries we could make on foot, on the
Bercy quais or along the reaches of the Saint-Martin canal? W h e n we
ate bread and foie gras Marie in my room, or had dinner a t the Brasserie
Dernory (Sartre adored its heavy smell of beer and sauerkraut) we did not
fee] deprived of anything. In the evening we would look in a t the Falstaff
or the College Inn and drink our cocktails like connoisseurs-Bronxes,
Sidecars, Bacardis, Alexanders, Martinis. I had a particular weakness for
two specialties-mead
cocktails a t the Vikings' Bar, and apricot cocktails a t the Bec d e Gaz on the Rue Montparnasse: what more could the
Ritz Bar have offered us? Occasionally we broke out and enjoyed ourselves: I remember eating chicken and cranberry sauce one evening at
the Vikings' Bar while up on the dais the orchestra played a popular hit
of the day called "Pagan Love Song." I am sure this celebration would
not have made such an impression on me unless it had been something
out of the ordinary: indeed, the very modesty of our resources served to
increase my pleasure.
In any case, the pleasure to be derived from expensive possessions is
not so simple or direct. They are basically a means to an end; the glamour they acquire is shed upon them by some glamorous third party. Our
puritanical education and the firmness of our intellectual commitment
ensured that we remained immune to dukes, millionaires, owners of
Hispanos,* women in mink, and all such denizens of high society. W e
actually stigmatized this beau rnonde as the very dregs of the earth, on
the grounds that i t sucked profit from a regime which we condemned. I
felt a certain ironical pity for these people. W h e n I passed by the impenetrable portals of Fouquet's or Maxim's, I pictured them, cut off from
the masses, helpless prisoners of their own wealth and snobbery-surely
it was they who were the real outsiders. For the most part they simply
did not exist as far as I was concerned: I n o more missed their refined
pleasures than the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. missed cinema or
radio. Obviously the cash barrier formed a block t o our curiosity; but this
caused us n o annoyance, since we were convinced that the smart set had
nothing to teach us: their mannered self-indulgence concealed a howling
void.
W e had no external limitations, n o overriding authority, no imposed
pattern of existence. W e created our own links with t h e world, and
freedom was the very essence of our existence. In our everyday lives we
gave it scope by means of an activity which assumed considerable importance for us-private
fantasies. Most young couples tend t o enrich their
'Expensive cars-ED.
60
The Norton Book of Women's Lives
normally somewhat bare past with intimate fantasies and myths. W e
embraced this pursuit all the more zealously since we were both active
people by nature, and for the moment living a life of idleness. T h e
comedies, parodies, or fables which we made up had a very specific
object: they stopped us from taking ourselves too seriously. Seriousness
as such we rejected no less vigorously than Nietzsche did, and for much
the same reason: our jokes lightened the world about us by projecting it
into the realm of imagination, thus enabling us to keep it a t arm's length.
Of the two of us, Sartre was the most inexhaustible. H e made up a
whole stream of ballads, counting-out rhymes, epigrams, madrigals,
thumbnail fables, and occasional poems of every description. Sometimes
h e would sing them to airs of his own invention. H e considered neither
puns nor wordplay beneath him, and enjoyed experimenting with alliteration and assonance. This was one way of coming t o grips with the
language-by both exploring the potential of words and discarding their
everyday usage. From J. M. Synge h e had borrowed the myth of Baladin,
the eternal wanderer who disguises life's mediocrity with glorious lying
fantasies; and James Stephens' The Crock of G o l d had provided us with
the idea of the leprechaun, a gnome who crouches under tree roots and
keeps misery, boredom, and doubt a t bay by cobbling tiny shoes. Both of
them, the adventurer and the stay-at-home, taught the same lesson:
literature above all else. But in their hands the motto lost its dogmatic
weightiness; and we derived a certain backhanded pleasure from referring to our future books, so dear to our hearts, as "our tiny shoes."
We were both as healthy as horses and of a cheerful disposition. But I
took any setback very badly; my face changed, I withdrew into myself
and became mulish and obstinate. Sartre decided I had a double personality. Normally I was the Beaver; but occasionally this animal would be
replaced by a rather irksome young lady called Mademoiselle de Beauvoir. Sartre embroidered this theme with several variations, all of which
ended by making fun of me. In his own case, things very frequently got
him down--especially in the morning, when his head was still foggy with
sleep, or when circumstances reduced him to inactivity: h e would hunch
himself into a defensive ball, like a hedgehog. O n such occasions h e
resembled a sea elephant we had once seen in the zoo a t Vincennes
whose misery broke our hearts. A keeper had emptied a bucketful of
little fish down the beast's throat, and then jumped on its belly. T h e sea
elephant, swamped by this internal invasion of tiny fish, raised tiny,
hopeless eyes heavenward. It looked as though the whole vast bulk of his
flesh were endeavoring to transmit a prayer for help through those two
small apertures; but even so embryonic an attempt at communication
was denied it. T h e mouth of the great beast gaped, and tears trickled
down over its oily skin; it shook its head slowly and collapsed, defeated.
1
i
II
II
L
,
t
i
1
1
i
Simone de Beduvoir
i
i
I
f
I
i
t.
t
I
61
W h e n Sartre's face took on an unhappy expression, we used t o pretend
that t h e sea elephant's desolate soul had taken possession of his body.
Sartre would then complete t h e metamorphosis by rolling his eyes up,
sighing, and making silent supplication: this pantomime would restore
his good spirits. O u r various moods we regarded not as a kind of inevitable symptom engendered physically, but as a species of disguise that we
assumed in a perverse moment and could discard a t will. All through our
youth, and even later, whenever we had to face a difficult or disagreeable
situation we would work it out first as a private ad hoc drama. W e turned
it upside down, exaggerated it, caricatured it, and explored it in every
direction; this helped us a good deal in getting i t under control.
We used t h e same method in defining our domestic status. W h e n we
met again in Paris we found a name for our relationship before we had
decided just what that relationship was t o be. "It's a morganatic marriage," we said. As a couple we possessed a dual identity. In t h e ordinary
way we were Monsieur and Madame M. Organatique, unambitious,
easily satisfied, not very well off, t h e husband a civil servant. But sometimes I dressed up, and we would go t o a cinema on t h e Champs ElysCes,
or dancing a t La Coupole, and then we were an American millionaire
and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Hattick. This was not a hysterical
joke designed t o make us feel that, for a few hours, we were enjoying t h e
pleasures of t h e idle rich; it was, rather, a parody, which confirmed us in
our contempt for high society. O u r modest celebrations were quite
enough for us: there was nothing further fortune could d o for us. We
were asserting our actual status. But a t the same time we feigned release
from it. T h a t penurious pair of fietits bourgeois whom we called Monsieur and Madame M. Organatique had no real identity with us: by
wriggling into their skins for a joke we emphasized t h e difference.
As I have already made clear, I also regarded my day-to-day activities-among
others, my job as a teacher-in
t h e light of a masquerade.
By releasing t h e pressure of reality upon our lives, fantasy convinced us
that life itself had no hold upon us. W e belonged t o n o place or country,
no class, profession, or generation. O u r truth lay elsewhere. I t was inscribed upon t h e face of eternity, and the future would reveal it: we were
writers. Any other verdict was t h e merest false illusion. W e believed
ourselves t o b e following t h e precepts of those ancient Stoics who likewise had staked their all upon freedom. Committed body and soul t o t h e
work that depended on us, we threw off the yoke of all obligations
irrelevant to this central purpose. W e did not go so far as to abstain from
such things altogether-we
were too experience-hungry for that-but
we bracketed them off as mere interludes. Circumstances permitted us a
certain measure of detachment, free time, and general insouciance; it
was tempting t o confuse this with sovereign freedom. T o explode this
62
The Norton Book of W o m e n ts Lives
fallacy we would have needed t o see ourselves from a distance, in perspective; and we had neither t h e means nor the desire t o d o so.
T w o disciplines might have clarified our thinking, those of Marxism
or psychoanalysis. W e had only t h e most rudimentary knowledge of
either. I remember a very fierce quarrel which took place a t the Balzar
between Sartre and Politzer,* who was attempting to show Sartre up as a
fietit bourgeois a t heart. Sartre did not reject the label, but maintained
that it was inadequate as a complete definition of his attitude. H e posed
t h e thorny problem of t h e intellectual with a bourgeois background
who---according t o Marx himself-is
capable of rising above t h e characteristic beliefs of his class. In what circumstances could this happen?
How? W h y ? Politzer's shock of red hair glowed flamelike, and words
poured out of him; but h e failed t o convince Sartre. In any case Sartre
would have continued t o play his part in t h e fight for freedom: h e still
believes in it to this day. But a serious analysis of t h e problem would have
modified t h e ideas we held about it. O u r indifference to money was a
luxury we could afford only because we had enough of it t o avoid real
poverty and the need for hard or unpleasant work. O u r open-mindedness
was bound up with a cultural background and the sort of activities accessible only t o people of our social class. I t was our conditioning as young
petit bourgeois intellectuals that led us t o believe ourselves free of all
conditioning whatsoever.
W h y this particular self-indulgence rather than another? W h y continual questing alertness rather than a slumberous dogmatic certainty7Psychoanalysis might have suggested some answers if we had consulted it. It
was beginning t o spread in France, and certain aspects of it interested us.
. . . W e looked favorably on t h e notion that psychoses, neuroses, and
their various symptoms had a meaning, and that this meaning must be
sought in t h e patient's childhood. But we stopped short a t this point; we
rejected psychoanalysis as a tool for exploring a normal human being.
W e had hardly read any Freud apart from his books The Interfiretation o f
Dreams and The Psycho~athologyo f Everyday Life. W e had absorbed
t h e letter rather than t h e spirit of these works: we were put off by their
dogmatic symbolism and t h e technique of association which vitiated
them for us. Freud's pansexualism struck us as having an element of
madness about it, besides offending our puritanical instincts. Above all,
t h e importance it attached t o t h e unconscious, and t h e rigidity of its
mechanistic theories, meant that Freudianism, as we conceived it, was
bound to eradicate human free will. N o o n e showed us how t h e two
*Georges Politzer, a philosopher and man of letters, was one of the first French intellectuals to join the Communist party-ED.
1.
C
,
,1
I
I
I
Simone de Beauvoir
63
might possibly be reconciled, and we were incapable of finding out for
ourselves. W e remained frozen in our rationalist-voluntarist position: in
a clear-minded individual, we thought, freedom would win out over
complexes, memories, influences, or any traumatic experience. It was a
long time before we realized that our emotional detachment from, and
indifference to, our respective childhoods was to be explained by what
we had experienced as children.
If Marxism and psychoanalysis had so little influence on us, a t a time
when many young people were rallying to both, it was not only because
our knowledge concerning them was so sketchy, but also because we had
no wish t o observe ourselves from a distance with the eyes of strangers.
Our first need was to prevent any dissociation between mind and personality. Far from setting theoretical limits to our freedom, we were now
practically concerned with safeguarding its existence-for it was in danger.
In this respect there was a marked difference between Sartre and me.
It struck me as miraculous that I had broken free from my past, and was
now self-sufficient and self-determining: I had established my autonomy
once and forever, and nothing could now deprive me of it. Sartre, on the
other hand, had merely moved on to a stage of his development as a man
which h e had long foreseen with loathing. H e had more or less shed the
irresponsibility of adolescence, and was entering the adult world which
he so detested. His independence was threatened. First h e would be
obliged to do eighteen months' military service, and after that a teaching
career awaited him. H e had found an answer t o this: a French lectureship was being advertised in Japan, and h e had put in an application for
October, 1931. H e counted on spending two years out there, with the
possibility of further foreign posts afterward. According t o him the
writer or storyteller should be like Synge's Baladin, and never settle
anywhere for good-r
with any one person. Sartre was not inclined to
be monogamous by nature: h e took pleasure in the company of women,
finding them less comic than men. H e had no intention, a t twenty-three,
of renouncing their tempting variety.
H e explained the matter to me in his favorite terminology. "What w e
have," h e said, "is an essential love; but it is a good idea for us also to
experience contingent love affairs." W e were two of a kind, and our
relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up
entirely for the fleeting riches t o be had from encounters with different
people. How could we deliberately forego that gamut of emotionsastonishment, regret, pleasure, nostalgia-which
we were as capable of
sustaining as anyone else? W e reflected on this problem a good deal
during our walks together.
66
The Norton Book o f Women's Lives
that period I was too prone t o imagine that what suited me must needs
suit everybody.
Today, on the other hand, I feel irritated when outsiders praise or
criticize the relationship we have built up, yet fail t o take into account
the peculiar characteristic which both explains and justifies it-the identical sign on both our brows. T h e comradeship that welded our lives
together made a superfluous mockery of any other bond we might have
forged for ourselves. W h a t , for instance, was the point of living under
the same roof when the whole world was our common property? W h y
fear t o set great distances between us when we could never truly b e
parted? O n e single aim fired us, the urge t o embrace all experience, and
to bear witness concerning it. A t times this meant that we had t o follow
diverse paths-though
without concealing even the least of our discoveries from one another. W h e n we were together we bent our wills so firmly
t o the requirements of this common task that even at t h e moment of
parting we still thought as one. T h a t which bound us freed us; and in this
freedom we found ourselves bound as closely as possible. . . .
To achieve basic understanding with someone is a very rare privilege
in any circumstances; for me it took on a literally infinite value. At the
back of my memory there glowed, with unparalleled sweetness, all those
long hours that Zaza" and I had spent hidden in Monsieur Mabille's
study, talking. I too had experienced moments of poignant pleasure
when my father smiled a t me, and I could tell myself that, in a sense, this
peerless man was mine. M y adolescent dreams projected these supreme
moments of my childhood into the future: they were not mere insubstantial fancies, but had a real existence for me-which
is why their
fulfillment never struck m e as miraculous. Certainly circumstances were
all in my favor: I might never have found anyone with whom I could
reach a state of perfect agreement. W h e n my chance was offered me, I
took it; t h e passion and tenacity with which I did so showed how deeply
rooted the urge was in me.
equal, as Zaza had
Sartre was only three years older than I was-an
been-and
together we set forth to explore the world. M y trust in him
was so complete that h e supplied m e with the sort of absolute unfailing
security that I had once had from my parents, or from God. W h e n I
threw myself into a world of freedom, I found an unbroken sky above my
head. I was free of all shackling restraint, and yet every moment of my
existence possessed its own inevitability. All my most remote and deepfelt longings were now fulfilled; there was nothing left for m e t o wishexcept that this state of triumphant bliss might continue unwaveringly
forever. Its sheer intensity carried all before it; it even managed to engulf
"Zaza (Elizabeth Mabille) was a childhood friend who died young-ED.
the fact of Zaza's death. I was shocked enough at the time: I wept and
felt my heart would break; but it was only later that grief made its real,
insidious inroads upon me. That autumn my past lay dormant; I belonged wholly to the present.